Re: Road Runner and IP Masquerading

["Mark R. Besonen" <besonen@geo.umass.edu>]

> > Or you can just power cycle your modem.
> 
> In the UK, they  configure their DHCP server to only serve registered MAC
> addresses. Powercycling your modem won't help. The situation may be
> different in the US though.


Power cycling is definitely not enough with *some* cable modems.  A client
of mine in Western Mass. was sold an RCA cable modem by Circuit City to
use with his pending RoadRunner connection.  We split the connection with
one of those nice Linksys BEFSR41 cable routers.  However, even after
registering the router WAN-side MAC address with RoadRunner/MediaOne, the
router was not able to pick up an IP address on bootup.  RoadRunner tech
support said that this particular RCA cable modem model would *also*
sometimes get "stuck" with a particular MAC address, and then would only
communicate with the device with that MAC address.  Power cycling the
modem (no reset switch) was not enough--the thing had to be physically
unplugged from the wall for some extended period of time (overnight) to
clear out the condition.  In this case, I went back the next day (20 hours
later) after having the whole thing physically unplugged, and was once
again greeted with rejection.  So I unplugged everything again, and
returned three days later at which point everything started up fine.  The
point is that with this particular RCA cable modem, simple power cycling
was not enough, and neither was 20 hours of having it physically
unplugged--it needed some amount of time >20 hours, but less than 3 days--
to clear out its memory and allow connection by a device with a different
MAC address.

Mark